


(jealousy) get the best of me.

by katarama



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gyms, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Jealousy, M/M, Off-Season, Past Drug Addiction, Polyamory Negotiations, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-22 13:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11380698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: There’s a familiar couple with warm smiles and crinkled eyes standing at the airport outside his gate with a giant sign sporting his name, and Alicia Zimmermann gives Kent the biggest, warmest hug he’s had off the hockey rink in years.  Kent forgot how much he missed that.  How much he missed them.In the excitement of it all, Kent forgets a very, very important thing about Bad Bob Zimmermann.Bad Bob Zimmermann is a terrible meddler.





	(jealousy) get the best of me.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_rocket_frost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_rocket_frost/gifts).



> For the prompts: Jack/Kent, future, everyone still playing hockey, Bitty and Kent not being best friends, conversation between Jack and Kent about how Jack described their relationship to Bitty, "Well, we work out in the same gym over the summer, we should try to get along"
> 
> Thanks so much to the incredible Alex for the emergency beta and for cheering me on, I love you <3

Kent likes Las Vegas.

He didn’t expect to end up there.  He had every expectation that it’d be Jack instead of him, which was always a weird thought.  Imagining Canadian, ice in his blood Jack Zimmermann living in the middle of the desert was always a little bit hilarious to Kent.

Thinking about Jack’s bottle of pills and the bright lights was a less funny image.

But, as unexpected as it was, Kent likes it here.  He’s a love him or hate him kind of player living in a love it or hate it kind of city.  He likes his team and he likes his management, as well as one can really like hockey team management.  Vegas is a good fit for him in a way it never would’ve been for Jack, and Kent is glad to call it his home.

Still, Kent is a New Yorker at heart.  Vegas has never been his only home and it will never be his only home.  He uses every off-season to escape the summer heat and to touch back with the places and the people that are still important to him.  He’ll visit his mom for a while, or hang with Troy’s family.  

No matter how many texts he exchanges with Bob and Alicia Zimmermann, he hasn’t been back to Quebec for long, not since the draft.  

For a while, his excuse was wanting to avoid the place that used to make him so happy when he was so thoroughly miserable.  For a while, his excuse was wanting to avoid running into Jack.  But Jack’s playing hockey now.  Real hockey.  Jack has an apartment in Providence and a few seasons under his belt there, and Alicia and Bob keep making hints about the number of spare bedrooms open in their house, and about how those rooms will be open all summer.  Along with their own personal gym, which is perfect for hockey players needing to be ready for next season.

Kent clears some time in his schedule to visit his mom, first.  He needs the space to visit her, to talk to her.  To get some quality hugs in.  But for a number of years in there, even when Kent didn’t have Jack, he had Alicia and Bob, his surrogate hockey parents.

He figures that he can pay them a visit.  Stay for a little bit.  They tell him openly that he’s more than welcome, and Kent believes it.  His trainers tell him it’s fine, as long as he keeps up with the schedule they set.  So, Kent packs and arranges the flights and coordinates moving in.  He visits his mom for a little and talks himself up as he boards the plane heading to Canada.  He’s jittery and nervous, and his head is flooded with the images of the last time he was in this airport.  He was eighteen years old and headed for a brand new city with a brand new team full of brand new people, without his best friend in the world.  

There’s a familiar couple with warm smiles and crinkled eyes standing at the airport outside his gate with a giant sign sporting his name, and Alicia Zimmermann gives Kent the biggest, warmest hug he’s had off the hockey rink in years.  Kent forgot how much he missed that.  How much he missed them.

In the excitement of it all, Kent forgets a very, very important thing about Bad Bob Zimmermann.

He doesn’t remember until after they drive home and pull into the garage and Kent grabs his bags from the backseat, after Kent gets a good look at the way Bob’s changed the cabinets in the kitchen, or the way the hallways have gotten a repaint.  He’s talking to Alicia about their remodeling project when there’s the sound of someone clearing their throat in the background.

Kent freezes, and he feels the entire room still around him.

When Kent turns around and sees Jack standing there in a Samwell t-shirt with sweatpants slung low on his hips, Bob says, “Jack, Kent’s going to be staying with us this summer,” in the mildest voice possible, and Kent remembers.

Bad Bob Zimmermann is a terrible meddler.

* * *

To his credit, Jack doesn’t blow up right there and then.  

He doesn’t lash out at Kent.  He doesn’t say that Kent has to leave, and he doesn’t shout at his parents.  His eyes go wide and he starts speaking in French, like he’s forgotten that Kent can understand enough of it to know that Jack is confused and upset and trying to understand.  Bob and Alicia talk him down.

Jack doesn’t meet Kent’s eyes.  It makes dinner pretty awkward.

“I can leave,” Kent tells Jack, as they’re rinsing the dishes in the sink.  “If I realized you were going to be here, I-”

“They want you here,” Jack says dismissively.  

“But do you?”

A minute passes, and then another, and the only sound filling the room is the rush of the tap water.  Kent’s nerves fray the longer he listens for words that apparently aren’t going to come, and he knows right then and there that any answer Jack finally gives, he isn’t going to like.

“Fine,” Kent says.  “Okay.  Right.  I get the picture.”  He turns the sink off and moves around Jack to put his plate in the dishwasher.  Jack’s hands still grip the edge of his plate, his knuckles white.

Jack still hasn’t said a word, and that says everything Kent needs to know.  Kent’s on his way out of the kitchen to grab his stuff and book the first flight out of town when Jack stops him dead in his tracks yet again.

“Don’t leave tonight,” Jack says, so quietly that Kent isn’t even sure he heard him right at first.  “They’d be disappointed.”

Kent knows that it’d be unfair to reply that Jack always cared more about what would disappoint his parents than Jack cared about what he actually wanted.  It doesn’t mean he isn’t tempted to say it, anyway.

“I’m working out early tomorrow morning, then,” is what finally comes out.

Jack asked him not to leave tonight, but he makes no promises for tomorrow evening.

* * *

It’s nearly 5:00 AM when Kent drags himself out of bed.  It feels like way, way earlier.  Kent resists the urge to snooze his alarm a couple times and pads down the hall to the bathroom, brushing his teeth and washing his face and checking to make sure he looks at least marginally less dead than he feels.  He’s so tired that the night before doesn’t come flooding back until he’s dressed in his workout clothes and making his way to the kitchen to grab a protein shake.  

Kent is opening the fridge when he hears a soft southern voice, tinny and distant, like it’s projected out from the speaker of a phone, growing slowly louder.  

“Sweetpea, you tell Kent Parson to-”

“It’s okay, Bits,” Jack’s voice says from the hallway.  Kent never thought he’d hear Jack standing up for him, but apparently that’s a thing.  “He’s not here for me.  He didn’t know I was in town.”

“Are you okay?” the voice, Bits, apparently, asks.  “You’re always welcome to visit down here for the summer, if he’s gonna be stickin’ around.  I- we can work around Mama and Coach, it’s-”

“I won’t make you hide all summer,” Jack says seriously.  “You remember with the team.  I never want to make you do that again, especially not with your family.”

“I’m already hidin’ from them, Jack.”

Kent closes the fridge loudly, because where this conversation is going sounds like something he _really_ shouldn’t be hearing.  His hand grips tight around the fridge door handle, and Jack goes quiet.

“I’ll talk to you later, bud,” Jack tells the person on the other end of the phone.

Kent knows what the pet name “bud” means better than anyone, and more than the pet name and the more than friendly concern coming out of the caller’s mouth, that makes his stomach sour.

“I heard,” Kent tells Jack when Jack walks into the kitchen.  He tells himself that it’s intended to be fair, so Jack isn’t left fretting and wondering exactly how much of that private conversation Kent was tuned into.  The, “Clearly your parents know, so you don’t have to pull that bud bullshit around me,” he slides in right after is unmistakably out of spite.

Jack winces.  

“I won’t tell anyone,” Kent says, the closest to an apology he can muster this early in the morning.

“I didn’t expect you to tell,” Jack concedes.  “You always kept my secrets.  And… you’ve met him already.  Last time we saw each other off-ice.  The guy from the hallway.”

“Blondie?” Kent asks.  He tosses Jack the Gatorade he already grabbed and reaches back into the fridge.  “Were you hooking up back then, or…?”

“Coincidence.”  Jack unseals the cap of the drink and takes a sip.  “He’s not your biggest fan, though.”

“Christ.  If that’s all he has to go on, no wonder he sounded like he was two seconds away from a passive-aggressive ‘bless his heart.’  Nothing like meeting your future boyfriend’s ex at their shittiest.”

“He says ‘bless his heart’ a lot talking about you,” Jack says, and at least there’s humor in his voice now.  He’s taking Kent’s admission for what it was, but not picking at it.  “Though, it isn’t all he has to go on.”

Kent closes the fridge door for the second time, a grab-and-go protein shake in his hand and a second red Gatorade nestled in the crook of his elbow.  “Do I really want to know?” he asks.

Jack sits on it for a second, and Kent starts to wonder if this entire trip is going to be an exercise in interpreting Jack’s silences.  He supposes that that’s not all that much different from when they were… doing whatever they were doing.  He just used to be better at it back then.  Or, at least, he thought he was.

“Christ,” Kent repeats, cutting this off before it drags on too long.  “Okay.  I’m going to down this protein shake, and then I’m going to go downstairs and check out your dad’s gym.  You can call your…”

“Boyfriend,” Jack fills in, and there’s more than enough jealousy in Kent’s heart that he hates the way Jack’s mouth makes the word sound soft.

“Right.  Your boyfriend.  You can call him back, or whatever, since apparently both of you are up at an ungodly hour for no reason.”

Kent needs a little bit of time to sit on this.  Kent needs a little time to process the fact that Jack being with someone else can still make him feel this way.  Kent needs a little time to process that there are parts of Jack’s history that he doesn’t know, anymore.  That there are parts of Jack that he never got that this tiny Southern dude does, the official title and the warm glow and the willingness to commit.  

Kent’s heart aches, even years after he thought he’d managed to make himself feel nothing around Jack Zimmermann.  Kent still wants Jack.  And now someone else has him, for real.

“It wasn’t for no reason,” Jack admits.  “I couldn’t sleep.  I knew you’d be up.”

“And?”

“Well,” Jack says, hesitating.  “You need a spotter?”

 _Christ_ , it’s too early for this.  “I wasn’t planning on doing weights today,” Kent says.  “I wouldn’t say no to some company, though, if you aren’t planning on running down to the South to avoid me.”

“I’ll go get my running shoes if you promise not to chirp me for them like Bittle does,” Jack says.

“Sweetpea, I don’t do anything like Bittle does,” Kent replies, smoothing over every bit of unfair, unjustified hurt he has tucked inside his chest.  He swears he sees Jack’s eyes dip down, maybe a slight flush on Jack’s cheeks, but it’s also entirely probable that it’s all wishful thinking.

When he sees Jack’s garish yellow running shoes, he chirps him, anyway.

* * *

The afternoon comes and goes, and Kent doesn’t leave the Zimmermann house.

He and Jack work out to one of Kent’s playlists, and Kent takes the first shower after they compare their numbers.  They survive dinner with only a few instances of Kent carefully biting his tongue.  They do the same thing again the next morning, meeting in the kitchen to head downstairs and get a workout in, and they survive another afternoon of carefully avoiding difficult conversations with each other.

It happens again, and again, and again, until it’s going on a week and a half of Kent being there without Kent fucking too much up.  He’s much better at keeping his mouth in check than he was when he saw Jack at his glorified hockey frat party.  He avoids bringing up Bitty, though Alicia seems incredibly eager to at every chance, and Bob watches Kent’s face every single time she does it, like he’s gauging Kent’s reaction.

He probably is, because he’s a fucking meddler.

Neither of them say anything to Kent about it, though.  In fact, no one mentions it to Kent at all, which is growing a bit frustrating.  He feels like the elephant in every room.  The shadowy, dark part of Jack’s past that they’d all prefer not to talk about as it was.  Alicia and Bob don’t ignore him, or pretend he wasn’t part of their lives, almost part of their family.  But everyone dances around Jack and Kent’s history like it’s taboo after years of not talking, after Jack went out and got himself a smaller, younger blonde.

Apparently, it’s enough for both of them to poke at him, to force him into the reality that their son has moved on, and it’s apparently enough that he gets special monitoring while they’re doing it.  He knows that has to be intentional, though he doesn’t know why they’re doing it.  Maybe it’s the gentlest way they know to acknowledge his feelings without going back in time, but it also kind of makes Kent feel like they’re parading Jack’s new relationship in front of him every chance they can get.  Like they’re trying to kindly inform him that the world has moved on without him while he’s been away.  

Sure, Kent knows that things are different this time.  Kent knows he’s _not_  what he used to be with Jack.  Kent knows they have no reason to keep rehashing something that went down in flames, that there’s no reason for anyone to want to bring it up.  But Kent’s barely had any time to deal with the fact that Jack’s moved on in the clearest possible way.  He’s wrapping his head around it bit by bit.  But there’s still a part of him who wants to ask, “What about me?” and “Do I matter to you anymore?” and “I’m the only one who still feels anything about this anymore, aren’t I?”

If it weren’t for the fact that Jack still avoids looking at Kent when he’s shirtless in the workout room, he’d almost start to believe he was.

“My abs aren’t going to murder you, bro,” Kent tells him one day when it’s particularly grating.  “It’s me.  You’ve seen a hell of a lot more of me than this.  And even if you hadn’t, you know better than to think you acknowledging my existence with your eyes when I’m not fully dressed is creepy.  I’m bi too, I’m not gonna be a dickhead.  If they’re doing that to you in your team gym, I can go bash some heads in.”

“My team’s good, for the most part,” Jack says.  He still isn’t looking Kent in the eyes.  “They’ve all met Bittle, they love him.”

“Oh, great,” Kent says, and he knows Jack hears the bitterness in it just as much as Kent hears it himself.  “So it’s just me then.  Cool.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, a quiet sort of admission that punches the air out of Kent.  “It is just you.”

Kent reaches for his shirt before Jack can open his mouth again.  Before Jack can give Kent a reason to be self-conscious or a reason to be angry or a reason to be hurt.  Before Kent can let any of his hurt out, sticking Jack in every vulnerable place Kent knows.  It isn’t fair.  It isn’t fair that Jack’s happy, and it isn’t fair that Kent isn’t the one making him that way.  But it’s even less fair for Kent to hold that against him, to constantly want to drag Jack back to him, to constantly want to remind Jack that he’s there and that he’s hot and that he’s still more than a little bit in love with Jack.

Kent’s tired of being the person to hurt Jack.  Kent’s tired of lying in the guest bed in Jack’s house, the same one Kent used to stay in when they were both barely legal, when Kent used to sneak over to Jack’s room and kiss Jack, when Jack used to want to kiss Kent back.  Kent’s tired of thinking back and trying to work out what went wrong, because the answer boils down to “everything”, and it breaks Kent a little bit.

“I think I should head home,” Kent says.  For once, he’s going to be the reasonable one.  For once, he’s going to be the one to walk away, instead of the one who keeps coming back again and again and again and hoping that the answer’s changed.  He’s so close to trying that again, and this time, he really fucking shouldn’t, because there are three people it’d hurt this time, instead of just two.  “I’m going to head home.  I’ll book my flight and say goodbye tonight.”

Jack doesn’t stop him as he heads out the door and goes straight for the shower.

Kent hates them both for that a little bit more than he should as he stands under the spray.

* * *

Dinner that night is a somber affair.  Bob reminds Kent that he’s welcome whenever he wants, and that Kent should feel free to drop by any time he’s in town.  Alicia tries to send Kent home with leftovers, despite the fact that Kent doesn’t have a way to keep them cold on the long flight home (and is a grown man who can cook his own meals, anyway).  Normally, the two fretting over him would make Kent feel a little warm inside, would remind Kent that he is loved, and that Quebec is still home.

Jack’s phone goes off in the middle of the meal, and he ducks out for a full twenty minutes to answer it.

Bob volunteers to do Kent’s dishes for him so he can go pack.  Kent takes the excuse to retreat to his room when it’s offered to him.

* * *

Kent’s bags have been packed for almost four hours when there’s a tentative knock on his door.  Kent hauls himself up off the bed to answer it - he only has a morning left in this house, and Bob and Alicia have been incredibly kind to put him up for this long.  He figures the least he can do is answer the door instead of pretending to be asleep.

It isn’t Bob or Alicia standing there.

It’s Jack, in the same clothes he was wearing the first night Kent got here.  His face is all walled up, and Kent is cringing a little preemptively, because there’s never been a single instance in the entire time Kent’s known him that that’s been a good thing at the start of a conversation.

The “we should talk” that accompanies it doesn’t particularly reassure Kent, either, but Kent lets Jack in, anyway.  Kent closes the door behind Jack and gestures to his bed, and Jack sits down on it in what used to be his usual half.

“Bits doesn’t trust you,” Jack says.

“Good to know,” Kent replies, bristling already.  “He doesn’t really need to.  Though it’s not all that surprising he doesn’t trust me, since he apparently hates me.”

“That’s partly my fault.  Partly your fault, from the kegster you were at.  But it’s… not just your fault.  I told him some things, I… didn’t trust you.  Especially not then.  When you hurt me, the easiest thing to do was distance myself from all of it, emotionally.”

The sad thing is, there are a zillion different ways to tell this story that are not exactly favorable to Kent, and Kent knows that.  He could probably draft up ten of them on the spot.  

“How bad are we talking?” Kent asks.  

“I said we hooked up a couple times and that you never moved on.  It was more detached than anything,” Jack says.  

“I still don’t see why this matters,” Kent says, because he doesn’t want to prolong this.  He doesn’t want to hear all the ways that Jack was able to move on when he wasn’t.  Because even when Kent pushed himself into Jack’s life, even when Kent said things that were designed to hurt, Jack could step back from it enough that he could be detached.  Like Kent never left a dent in the first place.

Kent thinks that might be even worse than Jack hating him.

For the first time since their morning workout, Jack meets Kent’s eyes.  “When you came back, I had to tell him that… that it wasn’t false.  What I told him was true.  Especially then.  You kept coming back and you kept wanting me, and I was someplace solid.  I was afraid of us.  I was especially afraid of where I was when we were an us.”

“So you think my abs are hot and had to air out the dirty little secret that your ex isn’t repugnant,” Kent says, more sarcastically than is probably fair.  

“I think your abs are hot,” Jack agrees, which is way more than Kent thought he’d ever admit to.  “I did tell him that.  But I also don’t think it was fair anymore to describe us as just physical.  I don’t think it was fair to present it to him as something that didn’t affect me.  I wanted to be honest with Bits.  To tell him that it does still affect me.  Bits and I try our best to be honest with each other, even when it’s hard.  So I thought he should know I still have feelings, even if… even if I’m not really sure what they are, or what they mean.”

“Does he hate me for that?” Kent asks.  “Because if he hates me for your feelings, I don’t even want to know what he thinks about me if he catches wind of mine.”

“He…” Jack pauses, like he’s being careful about how he proceeds.  “He told me once he wasn’t jealous.  About you and me.  But I think… he never felt like he had a reason to be before.  He knew he heard you say mean things.  He knew I talked about you being the one who never moved on.  Bits wouldn’t be jealous of that vision of you the same way he wouldn’t be jealous of Camilla.  It was in the past.  And I don’t… I don’t _think_  he hates you.  But I think he’s going to have to sit on the idea of you… maybe not being in the past.”

“Because he doesn’t trust me,” Kent says.

“Because he doesn’t trust you,” Jack agrees.

There are a lot of things that Kent wants to pick at.  He wants to talk about the fact that Kent “maybe not being in the past” implies some sort of action, or, at the very least, an active choice to put Kent in Jack’s present.  He wants to talk about the fact that none of this actually even matters in the first place, because Jack has a happy, loving boyfriend who (whether Jack is certain or not, Kent knows) hates Kent’s guts.  He wants to talk about how ludicrous and pointless this whole conversation is from the start, because Kent has given Jack so many opportunities to go back to being Them before Jack was with someone else.

“I want you to stay, though,” Jack tells Kent, and the questions all wash away.  “If it’s not too late.  I want… Would you stay?  Just until you were originally scheduled to fly out.  You can meet Bittle.  We can talk.  I can’t make promises about anything.  This... isn’t just up to me.  But if we’re going to see where this is and where it might go, it’d be easier if you were here.”

Kent should say no.  He can feel it in his gut, all his survival instincts screaming to get the hell out of dodge.  If he stays, he’s taking a risk.  He’s choosing to put himself out there and open himself up.  All for the possibility that Jack’s boyfriend, who already hates him, will take a look at everything that’s bared and say no.  No to Kent, and no to them dating.  Or doing anything at all.  He’s choosing to let himself want something more, which is the most dangerous feeling of all.

From where he’s at, that sounds much, much scarier than just letting it go and hopping on a plane.

“Can I think about it?” Kent asks.  “You gave me a lot to process.”

Jack says of course and leaves, and Kent lies on his bed, over the covers.  He lies there and he thinks.  He thinks about all the ways he’s touched Jack, and how long it’s been since he’s had any of them, aside from the checks that happen out on the rink.  He thinks about all the ways he’s felt about Jack.  In love and in pain, helpless and hopeless and lost and desperate.  He thinks about all the ways this could go bad, tallying them up in his head.

But he also thinks about how long he’s wanted this.  How his feelings for Jack are older, more complicated, but still just as certain as they were when he was 17.  He thinks about the fact that there’s someone else that is in on this, someone else who would be watching them both.  Keeping them both honest, which was one of their worst struggles in the first place.

It’s a tiny speck of a chance, but Kent doesn’t know how not to take it.

He calls up the airline and he cancels his ticket home.

* * *

It’s 5:00 AM when Kent’s phone alarm goes off, and by now, Kent’s adjusted to the jet lag and the time zone change.  He grabs his workout clothes out of his half-packed bag and puts them on.  He brushes his teeth and washes his face and heads downstairs.

Jack is sitting at the table with his phone, but everything is silent.  There’s no Bittle and no long pauses that Kent has to wait for Jack to fill, or not fill.

This time, it’s Kent’s turn.  And he takes it, when Jack looks up and sees Kent there, sitting down in the chair across from Jack.

“Turns out getting reimbursed for cancelled flights is way easier when you shell out for first class tickets,” Kent tells him.  “Or maybe it was the fact that I had a zillion frequent flyer miles on my account.”

“You’re staying?” Jack asks, tentative and nervous.  It’s not entirely different from the way Kent feels, if he’s being totally honest.

But his voice sounds much surer than he is when he says, “Yeah.  Let’s meet this boyfriend of yours.  The right way, this time.”

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://polyamorousparson.tumblr.com).


End file.
